Post by Lemur, The Kool-Aid Guy on Nov 21, 2012 22:35:24 GMT -5
Character Permission: Mooney
Name: Kalima Dey/Naraka (Kah-leem-uh Day/ Nahr-rah-kah)
Race: Togruta
Age: 46
Height: 5’ 10”
Weight: 157 lbs
Appearance:
The best place to begin with a description of Kalima is her face. It is safe to describe her visage as striking, as she possesses one of those faces that has a knack for staying embedded in a person’s memory, particularly a man’s memory. It is rather sharp, possessing angular features and a very distinct jawline. She has a patrician nose and full lips, but what commands the most attention are her eyes. These are a deep and rich brown, a chocolate color. They never quite seem to reflect her mood, but they have a hungry look to them that give her a distinctly insatiable look quite often.
Her headtails frame her face quite nicely, the white and dark-blue contrasting with her red skin. Up above are her montrals, the curving spires of ‘horn’ that serve as sensory organs for her. These are the chief racial attributes apparent apart from her deep-red skin, which is punctuated by white slash marks on her limbs and on her stomach. The markings on her face are quite distinctive as well, a white circle on her forehead and white slash marks from the corners of her eyes to the corners of her mouth.
Naraka is a true beauty of a woman, but there’s a downside; she’s not the female you can take home to mother, because she has ‘bad girl’ written all over her. It shows in the sly smile she often wears and the way she moves, slinking along in a bizarre mix of professional fashion model and dangerous wild animal.
It’s also apparent in the way she dresses, which is usually the first thing that anyone notices. Naraka is almost invariably found in revealing garments of black leather, little more than carefully-placed strips to deal with those ‘silly’ notions of modesty. It shows off her considerable assets very well. Her feet are perpetually bare, out of Togruta tradition, and the simple fact that she hates shoes and finds the feel of textures under her feet to be enjoyable.
This Togruta is extremely buxom and curvy, with a figure many in the galaxy would kill for, though it is hardly ideal in the circles of high fashion. She keeps herself in excellent shape through intensive exercise and through the aid of her naturally fast metabolism.
Naraka possesses three items of decoration that she always displays. The first is an akul-tooth headdress, with bronze teeth and intricately carved wooden beads, the second is a necklace of teeth, and the third is a pair of gold bracelets around her right wrist.
Personality:
Naraka is a woman governed by caprice, ruled by whims. She lacks any serious direction of her own, which makes her both remarkably easy to manipulate by those who rule and also persistently a minor nuisance.
The easiest distinction one can make about Naraka is that she is a seductress. Her reasons for seduction are rarely important, as for her it is more of a hobby than a calling. She has voracious appetites, which she slates with any being she can lure into her sphere. The fact that intimacy among Sith is dangerous only enhances her cravings and pleasure, as she finds danger almost as enticing as pain.
Naraka has a serious love affair with pain. It doesn’t matter whether she is giving or receiving the sensation almost everyone detests, the Togruta woman adores it either way. She loves the sensation both of dominating and being dominated, showing further differences she has by her mood.
Erratic would be an understatement when discussing Naraka, as her moods vary so wildly, even from one hour to the next. In the same day she might torture a prisoner, sleep with a colleague, cry into her pillow, or laugh merrily over a joke. The one consistency across all moods is that she craves intimacy, even of the false variety. Additionally, she craves flattery. Hearing kind words, even falsely kind words, about herself pleases her immensely, and she won’t hesitate to lavish ‘rewards’ onto those who please her.
Kalima is not a fan of technology. She considers droids to be soulless abominations, blasters to be playing god, and the holonet to be foolish false delights. She seeks her own pleasure not in technology, but in dangerous pursuits. Naraka routinely seeks out dangers and thrills, relying on the Force and her skills to pull herself back from the brink of the abyss. Her chief recreation however is nocturnal activity of a rather personal nature.
Naraka does nothing half way. If she is joyous, everyone knows it. If she is sadistic, her tortures are extreme. If she seeks pleasure, she will find it. If she is sad, her tears are bitter and her grief agonizing. While she is capable of extreme evil in her worse moods, if she feels generous or charitable, she is capable of great magnanimity.
In conversation, her words are usually brimming with seduction, delivered in the collected voice of a woman with absolute confidence in herself. She can often be sarcastic and snide, and deeply enjoys verbal sparring and battles of the tongue. And so much the better when it ends with her being flattered.
The Togruta woman is completely devoid of sentiment however. She doesn’t stay her hand over species, gender, or any other factor save one: A history similar to her own.
Kalima suffers from a sense of loss and abandonment. As a child she was left behind on Felucia when her mentor was summoned on a serious and dangerous matter with promises she would return. A decade passed with no avail, and that set in the red-skinned woman’s mind the idea that she could not rely on anyone but herself. When she sees others who have been abandoned, she empathizes with them and her charitable side comes out.
While Naraka is a chaotic force of destruction, her abilities can also be used for good, and to those who show loyalty to her and shower praise upon her, she can be both benevolent mother and doting lover.
While she might seem like an odd figure for a Sith Master, she isn’t a bad teacher by the standards of the Dark Side, having a very easily accessible manner of instruction and surprising patience, provided her students provide her with praise and flattery. Students who do not are met by abuse and cruelties.
Make no mistake, Naraka knows how to motivate. She can rule through fear or utilize pain as a tool to daunt her foes, and she rarely lets anyone get the best of her. Indeed, she rarely even allows herself to show weakness around other Sith, unless she chooses to feign it.
In combat, the Togruta woman is extraordinarily cunning and subtle, using traps, tricks, and ploys to her fullest ability. Despite this skill, she lacks the sense of foolish pride that some self-proclaimed duelists have, and she has no qualms about retreating from a fight that doesn’t go her way, which some would consider cowardice.
By that definition, Naraka is certainly a coward. By another definition, she still is. Kalima Dey does not pick fights she does not think she can win, and if involved in one, she will retreat. She considers this simple self-preservation, and has no qualms swallowing her pride to save her life.
In her command of the Force, Naraka specializes on telekinesis and telepathy, both of which she is rather talented at, with considerable ‘real-world’ experience at utilizing both. She is a master of two rare Force powers falling under each category, force flight (which she uses for enhanced mobility) and plant surge (which she learned in her youth alone and developed later). Her command of lightsaber combat is slightly less impressive, as outside of Shii Cho she is talented only in Niman and Jar’kai.
On the whole though, Naraka is a very dangerous Sith Master, apt instructor, and cunning fighter, but hampered by her own erratic tendencies, which hold her back from becoming truly great.
Birth place: Shili
Faction: Sith
Rank: Master
Previous Faction: Grey Jedi, Dark Jedi
Previous Rank: Apprentice, Knight
Lightsaber: Single blade single phase (x2)
Color: Blue (x2)
Practiced Lightsaber forms:
Shii-Cho 5
Makashi
Soresu
Ataru
Shien / Djem So
>>Sub-form Backhanded
Niman 5
>>Sub-form Jar-kai, or Dual Wield 5
Juyo
Double Bladed Combat
Force-Sensitive Abilities or practices:
Telekinetic: 8
Telepathic: 7
Body: 4
Sense: 7
Protection: 1
Healing: 1
Destruction: 5
Specialized Skills: Force Flight, Plant Surge
Languages: Togruti, Basic, Shyriwook (Understood)
Attributes:
Physical Strength: 4
Intelligence: 6
Speed: 6
Leadership: 5
Unarmed: 5
Melee Weapons: 4
Ranged Weapons: 0
Bio:
Shili
Kalima Dey was born on Shili, in a very remote tribe, far from all developed territory. Her village was little more than a few buildings of wood set in a deep valley. What was more, it was in an area surrounded on all sides by mountains, perfectly cut off from the rest of the planet. It was picturesque though, and the little girl had the opportunity to grow up surrounded by beautiful canopy forest and loving people.
Kalima’s parents were both local artisans who worked with leather, and she was never without food or love, Raana and Arji saw to that. They were both extraordinarily kind, and patient with Kalima. They taught her to speak and to eat, to clean herself, and all of the little feats a parent could be proud of.
The little Togruta girl’s days were composed of helping out with the leather, gathering flowers and berries, and practicing stalking thimiars like a grown-up. Her nights were composed of sitting by a fire and roasting meat before falling asleep in a bedroll in the corner.
It was a blissful experience, and one of the few things in her later life that would serve as a soothing memory.
As she grew older and stronger, Kalima learned about survival, about how to find water and how to hunt. She was taught everything from the best, and she was able to keep up with it, learning the ways of her people as she grew older.
The fact that she was Force-sensitive never came up at all. There were no blood tests, the Jedi Watchman was far away, and there weren’t any Force-users to be found until Kalima turned nine. A few days after she marked her birthday with a well-earned piece of meat and cup of fruit juice, something very, very unusual happened.
It was night, and Kalima was sitting on top of a boulder in a clearing, staring up at the night sky when one of the stars started to move. Excited at the prospect of a shooting star, the Togruta girl made her wish and stared at it with delight as it came closer and closer, until it passed by low overhead with a roar before coming to a crashing halt somewhere in the forest.
While the girl was scared, she was also curious, and she made up her mind to seek out the fallen star, already mentally wondering if it was aliens from another world, like she’d heard tell of from some in the village. When she arrived at the fallen star, she discovered it was a large metallic thing, smoking from the crash, with acrid smoke billowing from an open hatch. Tentatively she explored, climbing into it.
The smoke burned her throat, but Kalima dove in anyway, and started to check the rooms. In one she came face to face with a pair of aliens, both covered in blood and burns, the smell of their flesh pungent in her nostrils. She was terrified, but she reached out to check if they had pulses. One did, and she pulled him all the way out into the fresh air, then did the most heroic thing of her young life: She went back into the smoke-filled house of carnage in search of more injured people.
Kalima’s efforts yielded one other survivor and three more bodies. The survivor wasn’t an alien though, she was a Togruta as well, and she wore a metal cylinder on her belt that the child couldn’t recognize. With the pair out of immediate harm, Kalima ran back to the village and brought healers with her. Together they recovered the injured and carried them back to the village where their wounds were treated to the best of the tribe’s abilities.
When the Togruta child woke up the next morning, she hurried over to the healer’s hut and checked in on the alien and the mystery woman from the stars, and she found the woman was awake and tending to the alien. She looked up and greeted Kalima in Togruti, introducing herself as Ashla Ti, a traveler.
With rapt attention, Ashla told her story, and explained that the falling star was actually a ship that had started to crash on the way down to Shili, where she’d hoped to make a new life after leaving something called the Jedi Order. Ashla thanked Kalima that she’d been so very brave and rescued her and Janson from the smoke and fire.
What Ashla hadn’t yet mentioned was that she could sense the Force rippling off of Kalima, and she knew the girl needed training to learn to control her gift. Already she was devising a plan to take the girl to the Jedi Order and arrange to have them take her in.
Once Janson was awake and reasonably coherent, which was something Ashla had to reassure Kalima of since the man was clearly babbling gibberish, the Togruta ex-Jedi went in search of Kalima’s parents and sat down to discuss their child’s gift with them. She explained that Kalima was talented and powerful, and that she could become a great hero for the Republic, that she could make a difference in the lives of people everywhere.
Swayed by Ashla’s words, Raana and Arji agreed to give up their little girl to the Jedi.
For the week and a half that it took Ashla and Janson to assemble a transmitter from wreckage and await a response, Raana doted on Kalima, taking her daughter to do every fun thing she normally couldn’t, making the last days with her family blissful. Kalima didn’t even know she was leaving until the night before the rescue craft showed up. She didn’t go quietly either; the girl resisted strongly, but was eventually daunted by her parents’ wishes.
Ineligible
Ashla’s first stop was Corvala, the capital of the planet and one of only two cities. The Togruta Jedi took her charge in to the Watchman’s office, and took her before the wizened old woman. Kalima was quite nervous, but Ashla held her hand and told her it would be all right.
The Watchman required Kalima to pass a series of tests to see if she really was a Force-sensitive, and the girl passed. She looked to Ashla to see if this meant it was over, and she received a head-shake in the negative. Unsure what more she could do, Kalima was made to wait in the corner while she listened to an argument between Ashla and the Watchman.
It was simple, Ashla had said, Kalima was powerful enough that not training her was irresponsible. The Watchman had countered that she was too old to begin Jedi training and she would never fit in, would always be an outcast, that it was best to simply put her back in her own village.
Ashla was indignant, and decreed that her promise would stand. If the Order wouldn’t train Kalima Dey, then Ashla Ti would.
The Watchman told her nothing good could come of it, but Ashla took her new pupil by the hand and walked her out, pledging to her that she would wield the Force and became a great woman. Kalima had simply smiled and said she wanted that.
The Bond You Build
Ashla confided in Kalima right away that the girl was her first Padawan, or apprentice, and that she had never truly spent time training before. Nevertheless, she promised that Kalima would receive the best training she could provide, and Kalima accepted whatever she could get.
The girl, now ten, clung to Ashla more than ever, seeing her as a fusion of aunt and big sister. When the Grey Jedi said they were going to take up residence in a world strong in the Force, Kalima trusted her judgment, and they settled in to Felucia together as master and apprentice.
On the trip there, Ashla had begun explaining the Foundations of a brave new world. The Force was an energy field of all living things, and it gave a Jedi special power, power to do and to see, and they could reach out to sense every living thing. It sounded magical and amazing to Kalima, and she was eager to learn it.
The first year was hardly glamorous, as most of their time and effort was spent building a shelter to live in together as protection from dangerous animals and inclimate weather. Interspersed with the hard labor were lessons in morality and in the Jedi Code, there were even simple exercises to use her senses and to lift small objects with the Force. The crowning glory came when Ashla gave Kalima a real lightsaber to use for defense and for practice, showing her how to switch between settings.
Their relationship was growing as the second year came, and Kalima learned everything Ashla told her about herself. Her master was a Jedi Knight from Shili who had been trained in Mustafar, and who had come to Coruscant with her own master. She’d become a Consular, a diplomat who made peace, and a skilled fighter with a lightsaber as well. Kalima didn’t quite understand why Ashla had left the Jedi Order, but she received promises that she would find out one day, and that was good enough for the Togruta girl.
When she was 13, Kalima Dey’s training picked up considerably, and she was taught many fundamentals of Shii Cho and the Force, but she showed the most progress with telekinesis and telepathy. Sensing the thoughts Ashla let ripple off of her mind came naturally to her, and Kalima adored picking up small objects with the Force and trying to throw them. It was her hobby on those occasions when Ashla wandered off to meditate or to find food, deeming her student too young to hunt dangerous animals on Felucia.
The relationship between the two only continued to grow. They never spoke all that much together during the day, but they started to feel like two sides of the same coin, and Ashla fulfilled the role of family for Kalima. The whole aspiration of the teenage girl’s life was to become a great Jedi like Ashla, and to make her mentor proud. As such, she poured herself into her training, and she made rapid progress.
One activity that Kalima found especially delightful was climbing up large branches and fungi, and then letting herself drop to the ground, using the Force to cushion her fall. She also found that she could use the Force to alter her trajectory, to nudge herself as she fell. The Togruta girl would practice that incessantly.
Probably the most interesting thing she learned in her training was courtesy of Ashla. The Togruta Knight was skilled at something called plant surge, namely commanding plants through the Force to enhance their growth, to inspire them to do anything. Kalima watched with rapt attention as Ashla waved her hand and grew a vine from a seedling into a long strand that ensnared a beast, all in a few seconds.
The Grey Jedi promised to teach her pupil that skill and more, and they began the lessons focusing on blades of grass, and inspiring them to grow. The progress was slow at first, but she found eventually she was able to physically see it grow before her eyes. It made her extremely proud to see tangible results, and she wasn’t the only one. Ashla was proud too.
However, a turning point was reached at age 15, after six blissful years together. Ashla received a summons from the Jedi Order, demanding her presence and ordering her to come alone. Why was a mystery, but Ashla explained to Kalima that she had to go, but she would be back in just two weeks.
Kalima was sad, but she was confident she could live alone for just two weeks, so she stifled her emotions and waved goodbye to Ashla, not realizing that this was the end of their time together.
Two weeks of solitude passed, with Kalima practicing making plants grow and leaping from fungi like she enjoyed, and then when she expected Ashla to return, nothing happened. Another two weeks passed alone, and Kalima worried. Still another two weeks passed, and the Togruta girl was afraid she’d been abandoned. Another month passed, and then two, and then three. There was no sign of Ashla, and Kalima was totally alone, without a single other soul to bond with.
Daughter of Felucia
Kalima became increasingly odd in the absence of social activity. She rarely spoke, , and then only aloud to herself in Togruti, having never even learned Basic. Without guidance, she became increasingly erratic and unusual. She had no set schedule, and she soon forgot the morals she was taught, turning to new masters in her solitude.
Her new mentor was nature. Kalima watched animals fighting each other and saw the strong preying upon the weak, and the weak spiting the strong. Everywhere was violence for the sake of territory, for the sake of food, and for the sake of love. As her own body changed, becoming that of a woman, Kalima’s mind changed as well.
Ashla’s old lessons were gradually forgotten over three lonely years, and her love was replaced by a wild soul. Faced with a planet strong in the Force and untamed, Kalima became a reflection, falling to the inner darkness the planet was capable of bringing forth. Kalima became wild and untamed, giving in to any desire that crossed her mind, without discipline or moderation. When she desired to eat, she killed. When she desired to train, she trained. The only consistent growth she demonstrated was in her power.
Kalima was able to grow up plants to produce fruit, eating it as she needed, and in her leaps from plant to plant she was able to use the Force to slow her own falls, and gradually to resist them. When she meditated, she could lift herself up off of the ground, hovering in the air.
By the time her three years of solitude were up, Kalima Dey was all but unrecognizable, the concerned and loving child replaced by a vicious predator, a wild animal with no thought or concern for others, driven by selfishness and passions. Yet it was not quite apt to say she was in the Dark Side of the Force. Kalima was rarely purposefully evil, merely savage and untamed. What happened next would make her evil.
Descent
Kalima was meditating, hovering a foot above the ground, when she heard a familiar sound that brought her back to her childhood. It was another falling star, and she thought back to her first memories of the experience, of the stink of burnt alien flesh, the acrid smoke, and then she thought of Ashla, and wondered if this was her return.
The Togruta girl dashed off to the source of the sound, spotting a metallic ship flying down to land in a valley, and then she started to stalk the occupants as they emerged.
They were clad in black robes, and they held lightsabers. They were all human, save for one woman with headtails, a Twi’lek, though Kalima had never met one before. She was clearly in charge, giving orders to the others in a stern voice, speaking that alien language Kalima had never learned.
One of the Dark Jedi, for Dark Jedi they were, walked over to the shelter that Ashla and Kalima had built, and he kicked in the door and emerged with a few odds and ends. Overcome with rage, Kalima took a Force-enhanced leap and plummeted down ontop of him, gouging out an eye with her bare hands and biting open an artery with the cruel fangs in her mouth.
It was then that she discovered she enjoyed his pain, and the feel of his blood streaming down her chin. Even when he was lying on the ground she didn’t stop clawing at him. Of course a few seconds later she was pulled off of him, but he was already all but dead.
Kalima was bound and tossed against the ramp of the ship, and a fierce debate she couldn’t understand raged amongst the remaining four Dark Jedi.
The woman, a purple Twi’lek named Adri’van was the leader, the most powerful of them. She was adamant that they take in the ferocious Force-sensitive Togruta, that she would make a valuable addition to their little group. Indeed, Adri suggested that the young woman was the very reason they had been called to Felucia. One of the humans, a young man named Leonid, was equally adamant that they have revenge for their fallen member and kill the Togruta slowly. Another human, a woman named Ana, maintained that they kill her quickly. The last human, a man named Dervin, was carefully neutral and said nothing, knowing better than to cross Adri.
As it happened, Dervin was wise, as Adri beheaded both Leonid and Ana in one stoke of her lightsaber, not tolerating their dissent.
Adri, a powerful telepath, reassured Kalima that they were not going to harm her via soothing thoughts, and when the Togruta was unbound, she didn’t fight again. She accompanied Adri into the ship, where the Twi’lek woman found a protocol droid that could translate into Togruti. And then the explanations began, though Kalima had nothing but disdain for the soulless monstrosity that spoke to her.
The Dark Jedi were a group of Force-users just like Kalima, Adri explained, and that they could complete her training, as the Togruta’s master had clearly deserted her. That statement provoked Kalima, and Adri swiftly back-pedaled to say that Ashla surely hadn’t had any choice, but that clearly it was time for a new master to instruct her in the ways of the Force. After all, didn’t Kalima want to be powerful?
Kalima searched her mind for any reason why she shouldn’t agree to join the woman, and she couldn’t find one. Power was good, and she did want to begin her training again…
The Togruta woman agreed, and she joined the pair of Dark Jedi, making them a trio. They left Felucia that very day.
One month later, Ashla Ti returned. The Togruta Jedi had been involved in a second crash on Coruscant, one that had resulted in severe head trauma. The woman had been in a coma for a year, and only the best Jedi healing revived her. She’d spent another two years recovering her ability to walk and talk, and when her memory was restored she’d headed straight to Felucia, only to find her beloved apprentice was gone.
Dejected, Ashla returned to Shili to find Kalima’s parents and beg forgiveness for losing their daughter for good.
Meanwhile, Adri took her new pupil to the neutral world of Kashyyyk, to train free from prying eyes in the dangerous shadowlands, safely out of the reach of the Republic and the Jedi. And there Kalima had a renaissance of ability and an awakening of power.
Growing in the Shadows
Kalima turned 19, though her original birthdate was lost to time, and Adri began the new training in earnest, starting with language.
Adri used the Force to shove her way into Kalima’s mind and deposit knowledge of Basic, enabling the Togruta woman to understand her words. This fell far short of the ability to speak the language, and Kalima could only communicate through nods at first, and then telepathy. But she could understand the purple Twi’lek for the first time.
The Dark Jedi Master was a woman both cunning and subtle, and she knew how to wage psychological warfare. She’d touched Kalima’s mind, and she knew fully well what it took to take care of the Togruta’s allegiances. She was going to become the doting mother, the benevolent guardian.
They began by learning about the Dark Side, and Kalima was surprised to learn one could draw power from passion more easily than from peace. To her mind, passion was natural. After all, water flowed down the path gravity chose, and if passion was more intuitive, then passion was natural. And if it was the way of nature, Kalima could embrace it.
Kalima clung to Adri tightly, embracing her as master without hesitation or doubt, loyal to her not just because she had the power, but also out of gratitude for preserving her life on Felucia, and out of respect for her abilities as a teacher. In the pack, Adri was the head, and Kalima was a follower. She accepted this as a fact.
The Twi’lek was impressed by her pupil’s beginning talents of Force flight and her somewhat more advanced plant surge capabilities, and she carefully worked to hone those abilities. She also resurrected the teaching of Shii Cho, but expanded into Niman and into Jar’kai, providing Kalima with a better array of skills to fall back on in a fight.
Ashla had always taught that fights were to be avoided, but Adri sadly told the young woman that it was inevitable. She was strong, and her strength would attract challengers. Kalima had to be ready to face them down, to remain the victor. Adri told her that those weaker than her would be jealous, and that it was up to her to take what she needed by Force.
To Kalima, it made sense.
Combat and the Force weren’t the only things that Kalima learned. The Togruta woman also spent a great deal of time trying to have the words in her mind come out through her mouth, and she was able to slowly grasp the proper pronunciations of Basic words, and to assemble them in the correct manner. Her language skills improved, and Dervin proved to be an excellent language tutor.
What Kalima most enjoyed was their setting. The Shadowlands were a place of great life, and danger. She could feel every animal if she tried, and the feel of the damp soil under her bare feet was exquisite. The camp that Adri, Dervin, and Kalima shared was simple, but the Togruta woman was used to a simple life, having lived one all her days. Not once had she ever seen the holonet, or even a hologram. Living in the Shadowlands didn’t change that.
The Togruta quickly found that they had a division of labor. Adri directed everything, Dervin handled all the fine work, and Kalima did all of the hunting. She would go out with her lightsaber and hunt down animals, bringing them back and butchering them with a wicked knife. She generally ate her own meat raw, while the other two cooked theirs. Over time the wild young woman took to cooking her meat partway, allowing for a delicious and crusty exterior but a soft and bloody interior.
Periodically Dervin and Adri would leave for the Wookie villages, and Kalima would feel anxious out of fear of being left behind again, but Adri always came back, and she brought a new lightsaber on one occasion, already assembled just for Kalima. It was blue to match her existing saber, the one Ashla had given to her. Each crystal worked for her due to the special bond she shared with both her light and her dark masters.
Their simple existence continued until Kalima’s 25th year, when Adri announced her student was ready for the next phase of her training, and prepared to incorporate the girl into society, teaching her how to behave. It was going to be radically different, and not popular with Kalima.
Exit Light
The young Togruta Dark Jedi flew away from Kashyyyk with her Master and her associate, and the trio headed to Cato Neimoidia, which Adri determined had both city enough to teach Kalima and forest enough to prevent her from going insane.
By this point Kalima’s Basic was perfectly passable, but she still dressed in revealing leather garments and walked around in bare feet, not even trying to conceal the lightsabers resting on her waist. Adri couldn’t quite break her of that habit, but she didn’t feel it was important to. Her focus was actually just on socializing her pupil, and introducing her to the technology she disliked so much.
Though her comprehension was less than stellar, Kalima could read Basic, and the plethora of signs in the bridge cities did not go without being understood. The true intimidation was the fact so much was going on. There were too many people, too many noises, and too much to see. The Togruta woman felt a little dizzy, and Adri took her in a café to rest and recover.
While they drank tea like old friends, Adri assured her pupil that it was for her own good, because as a [Dark] Jedi, she was going to have to interact with others. Besides, she had to be strong, she had to be resilient, and she had to prove her worth as a student. Didn’t she want her Twi’lek master to be proud of her?
Over the course of two weeks, Kalima became familiar with the way life in a city worked, and she came to ignore the glances she received from passers-by for her strange attire. The culmination of their time on Cato Neimoidia was rapidly drawing to a close, as the task of adjustment was almost completed in Adri’s eyes. There was just one parting shot she wanted to get in.
Adri wanted her pupil to find her true potential as a Dark Jedi, and she felt that while her student was unquestionably wild, she wasn’t truly in touch with the darkness within. To cement her fall, she wanted to introduce the Togruta to her favorite topic.
The Twi’lek Master led Kalima to a dark room, and turned on a single light to reveal a human man tied to a chair. Her instructions to the Togruta were quite simple: Hurt the man.
Kalima blinked in surprise, unsure of what to do. While she’d enjoyed her first kill, she hadn’t ever had the opportunity or desire to kill or hurt another sentient being since then. She even said to Adri that she wasn’t sure she could. He hadn’t done anything to her after all.
Adri told her this was a test, and that she had to delve deep down to find her hatred and her rage, to admit that she found pleasure in pain, and that if she failed, the Twi’lek would leave her alone again.
Fear of loss drove Kalima into her first session of torture, and she started slowly, using her fists. Quickly she discovered she could sense his pain, and it shot a tingle of excitement up her spine. She used the destruction powers that Adri had taught her, shocking him with lightning, and she felt a strange kind of arousal.
Lastly, she used her fangs. To her surprise, she found herself kissing the doomed man, and biting into his lips, into his face, and into his neck. His blood was like a fine wine to her, and the sensation of his pain was silly.
From that moment on, Kalima had become evil. Moreover, she had become a sexual being. After the man’s body was disposed of, Adri let her out on her own as a reward, and Kalima found a stranger and seduced him, sharing his bed for a night before finding her way back to their ship. While she didn’t kill him, she gave in to an animal passion, clawing at his back with her nails as she lost her innocence in a second way.
Enter Night
As Adri took Kalima and Dervin off of the planet and into space, she couldn’t help but smile inwardly at how perfectly her training had come along. Kalima was devoted to her, and was now firmly rooted in the Dark Side. Admittedly the Togruta was much more of a sadist than her, but it was all still within tolerances. Her goal had merely been finding a worthy student, and she realized that Dervin would never be as worthy a student.
At Kalima’s request, the trio returned to Kashyyyk for more training, and there her abilities grew further.
The Togruta woman could grow out vines and send them to wrap around her quarry and immobilize them, she could hover in the air for hours as she meditated, and she could feel the power of the Force rippling through her. Similarly, she improved in spars, becoming Dervin’s equal. Shii Cho was mastered, and Niman and Jar’kai were nearly there as well.
After two years in her familiar settings, Adri took them back out into the galaxy at large, into Hutt space this time. They stopped off on Sleheyron, where Adri met an old friend and they had a little discussion. While Kalima did not know what they were saying, as it was in Twi’leki, she could tell that the man was asking her master a favor.
Adri went on to explain to Kalima that her dear friend was being followed by a pair of Jedi, and they were going to deal with them.
It was the Togruta woman’s first encounter with the Jedi, and she felt a slight reluctance. After all, Ashla had been a Jedi. But Adri was her new master now, and she had the power. Now was not the time to have ethical doubts, it was the time to act, to obey.
There were a pair of Jedi, and they met them in an alley at night. Unluckily for the pair of Dark Jedi, they weren’t a young Knight and a Padawan. Instead it was a Weapons Master and a Knight, and the pair of duels that broke out were rather severe.
While Kalima could literally feel the movements and locations of both the Master and Adri, her focus was almost entirely on the Knight. He was using a form she didn’t know, Djem So, and he was hammering away at her defenses. She managed to slash him in the arm, only to turn and see her Twi’lek Master lying on the ground with a stab wound, and the Weapons Master turning to face her.
Loyalty was fine, but her own preservation came first.
The Togruta woman fled, with the Weapons Master hot on her heels. No matter what she did, she couldn’t seem to shake him. She threw objects with the Force, she shoved passers-by in his way, but he still seemed to keep gaining. Finally she ran out of space and came to a deep urban canyon that revealed the lower city down below. Faced with a short and nasty ending to her life, Kalima jumped.
As she plummeted, the Togruta remembered her old habit of guiding her fall, and she grabbed herself telekinetically. Her momentum slowed, and she glided across the chasm, touching down on a walkway at the far end and making her escape back to the ship and Dervin.
In the absence of Adri, and dealing with her presumed death, the two agreed to become partners, and they beat a hasty retreat off of Sleheyron and headed to Umbara to lie low.
What neither of them knew was that Adri’van had survived the stab wound and was taken back to the Jedi Order who raised her, where she had been slowly healed and redeemed with time. Without her guidance, however, the duo of Dark Jedi were lost.
If anything, without direction Kalima became even more cruel and erratic. She was 27, and by all rights a very beautiful young woman, but she couldn’t be counted on for anything. Her days were spent listening to Dervin make plots and her nights were spent in lovemaking with strangers, often in increasingly deviated ways. Increasingly in the absence of her second mentor she found herself apathetic. There was no one to take orders from, as she certainly didn’t see Dervin as a superior, however he did make a few good points. It was up them to carry on Adri’s legacy now. He proposed that they take on an apprentice together, and that they both teach the youth they selected.
The Cycle is Complete
Together, the two Dark Jedi plotted to find a disgruntled ex-Jedi and teach them the ways of the Dark Side, and they decided the best place to start was Ukio, the Outer Rim agriworld home to a substantial population of Jedi dropouts in the Agricultural Corps.
By this point Kalima no longer felt serious sentimentality for the Jedi Order, as her first master’s love for it was undone by her second master’s apparent death from it. She would have been just as comfortable finding a Force-sensitive child who wasn’t a Jedi, but Dervin was adamant that the Order’s training would make their work easier.
They set up a small encampment in a green house and began to reach out with the Force, working to sense and catalog each failed Jedi and their minders. Dervin was skilled with Force Concealment, and he suppressed his presence enough to draw closer to their area of work, observing how many minders they had. They found the Corps members had a minimal escort, and Dervin was able to handpick a few likely candidates, judging they were unhappy by their expressions as they went about their work.
They planned their attack for mid-afternoon, when their opponents would be at their most bored, and their minders would be tired, and when the day came, the Dark Jedi acted rapidly.
The Togruta woman sprang into action first, using plant surge to bar the way through a series of groves for the Jedi, and cutting off their chosen pupil, a 14 year old sky-blue Twi’lek boy who had always seemed glum. As they acted though he was frightened and called for help.
Dervin knocked him out and started to haul him away, but the Jedi Knight guarding the children hacked his way through the brush and came face to face with Kalima, who promptly engaged him in a duel.
He was fighting to get past her, and she was fighting to immobilize him. He was caught off guard when she had a plant behind him extend a root and she forced him back a step. He tripped on it and she slashed a tendon in his leg, leaving him lying on the ground as she raced off to join Dervin.
Miraculously, they managed to make it off Ukio, though not without drawing Republic pursuers. They managed to shake them however as they jumped into hyperspace, promptly changing direction and heading for the isolated and unaligned world of Saleucami, and its exotic bulbous trees and barren landscape. They set up shop with their frightened captive in a large and derelict house in the outskirts of one of the sparsely-populated calderas home to vegetation and life. It was purchased outright with ill-gotten funds they had been hoarding for years.
For the first three days they couldn’t get much out of the frightened fifteen year old Twi’lek, apart from his name, Alada’ven. He was clearly distraught over his capture by Dark Jedi, and it took Kalima’s charms to set him at ease.
The lessons of Adri lived on, and her Togruta apprentice knew how to endear herself to the boy. She presented herself as a kind and benevolent mother, bringing him his food, then bringing him sweets. She would pat his headtails gently and whisper lullabies in Togruti when he was sleeping. Quickly he became attached to her, though he always shunned Dervin.
Kalima was able to coax him into talking, and she listened to his story attentively, always the doting mother.
Alada had been in the Order since birth, but he’d never really fit in. He’d wanted to become a strong and powerful Jedi, but when his 12th birthday came no one had been interested. He’d underperformed in the various tests, and when he’d turned 13 no one had intervened. He was sent to the Service Corps, where he’d languished for two years. The Jedi had contacted his family to see if he could be returned, but they had declined to take him home, and he’d been left on Ukio with a bunch of children he didn’t know.
As the weeks dragged into months, he grew very fond of ‘Aunt Kalima’ as she always presented herself. He began to think this was actually a blessing, and that he could have a loving relationship for once. For Alada, Kalima was the master he’d always wanted, doting and loving.
Hot For Teacher
By their second year together, Alada’s love for his mentor had transformed into something of a more physical nature, as was often the way with teenage boys. He found the little things about Kalima intoxicating. The fluid way she walked, the way she would sit in the morning sun in meditation, and the way she smiled seductively.
The only thing the Togruta woman loved more than sexual encounters was the sense of power she felt over Alada. All she had to do was snap her fingers and he yielded to her every wish. She touched him on the shoulder and he practically melted. Of course with so few prospects for intimacy on Saleucami, and Alada’s vicious jealous streak that emerged when he suspected ‘Aunt Kalima’ was heading into the town for sexual activity, it was practically inevitable that she sleep with him.
He was nervous and insecure while she was confident. For once she slept in a bed with him, letting him fall asleep on her breast when he was done. The next night she went back to sleeping on the floor as she was so wont to do, though their nightly activities became consistent events every few days.
He’d thought it was special, and even that she loved him, when it really couldn’t have been any more different. The truth was that the Togruta woman was using him for the sake of using him, and she increasingly began to use their intimacy as a reward and as a cudgel, threatening to withhold their nights of passion when he didn’t live up to her standards.
During the days however, Alada was improving dramatically. Kalima was instructing him in Jar’kai, as Dervin had procured parts for lightsabers, and the Twi’lek was actually learning. Like many sent to the Corps, he was simply a late-bloomer. However, he didn’t have as good a command of the Force as his Togruta master would have liked, and she was unable to teach him plant surge or Force flight.
By the end of their sixth year together Alada was a strapping 20 year old with near-mastery of Shii Cho and an aptitude for telekinesis, but thanks to Kalima’s training methods so far he wasn’t truly evil, though he had the prerequisites. He was jealous, possessive, at times aggressive, and he was firmly a slave to his passions, they just hadn’t led him to evil yet. The beauty was that Kalima had never led him to believe he was learning the Dark Side; Alada believed that he was student to a Grey Jedi.
Kalima herself was 33, and as cunning and subtle as ever. Like a spider in its web, she was carefully pulling the threads that would manipulate Alada into evil. She was certain that his jealousy was the right way to trap him, the right way to fill him with hatred. She began the preparations.
It started with a spacer the Togruta woman picked up in a local tavern, who she persuaded to come home with her. It wasn’t hard, as he was slightly drunk, and she was a gorgeous seductress. She was careful to ensure that Alada saw them enter the house together, and go up to a spare bedroom. She started to make love to him on the mattress, her lightsabers nearby and handy in the likely event it went south. And then she waited.
It was only about fifteen minutes before Alada stormed into the bedroom, and if he’d been ambivalent before, the sight of his beloved master naked on top of some drunk made him livid. He lashed out with his anger, striking down Kalima’s lover, but then a slight side-effect of her plan came back to harm her.
Alada grabbed her by the throat with the Force, and he started to choke her, wanting to slay her for her infidelity. She was lifted up off of her feet, gasping for air. As much as she didn’t want to lose her apprentice, she was less keen on losing her life.
The Togruta woman called her lightsaber to her and ignited it telekinetically, hurling the blue blade at the equally blue Twi’lek, who lost his arm, and his concentration. Kalima fell to the ground, gulping in air greedily and rubbing her throat, and then she wreaked her own vengeance.
She used Force lightning to shock her apprentice, to make him suffer. He writhed under her as she let out her anger, her fear at the sensation of being choked. When she stopped, he was a whimpering mess, cradling the burned stump where his arm had been.
Dervin came in and wasn’t pleased with how Kalima had handled the crisis. He’d always had his doubts about her plan, but now he was especially displeased, and he took Alada in to the nearest hospital to receive treatment, leaving him there and taking Kalima with him to their ship. As he explained, when they figured out it was a lightsaber that caused the loss, the Jedi would surely send someone to investigate, and when that happened they wanted to be very far away.
Too Little, Too Late
Dervin eventually tried to console Kalima, telling her that they would just find another apprentice to train together, but the Togruta woman was depressed, lamenting that they wouldn’t find as likely a candidate again, and that it would take a miracle to find what they needed. Dervin was willing to wait for that miracle, but Kalima wasn’t so impressed by his faith in the Force.
They struck up a bargain. They would spend one year together to find a new apprentice, and then if they failed they would go on their separate ways. Almost reluctantly Kalima agreed, and she allowed Dervin to take point as he usually did.
Over the course of that year, they broke into two orphanages to hunt for Force-sensitive children, lurked outside ten schools, and scrounged a half dozen planets in the Rim, all to no avail. Kalima began to think they were cursed, and by the end of the year she simply felt tired when she didn’t feel restless. The Togruta woman felt confined inside the metal spaceship, awkward in the Core Worlds. She didn’t like it, and even when Dervin came up with a ‘surefire’ scheme, she dismissed him and announced she was heading home to Felucia, to spend some time in seclusion.
Solitude
Kalima arrived onto Felucia again, and she instantly felt at home, though it had been over a decade since she’d been on the world of her youth. The nostalgia might have been overwhelming, had it not been for the sheer adulation she felt at being in a world rippling with life, rippling with the Force.
Even if she had known where her old dwelling was, it was unlikely she would have recognized it after so long. Kalima was dropped off by Dervin at very specific coordinates, and she came to call them home.
Her first order of business was crafting a shelter. In her case it was an earthen dwelling under large roots, which she excavated inch by inch over a month. In the end, it was quite a cozy little home for her, and she started to furnish it with her own creations.
The Togruta woman used her knife to carve various pieces of wood and plant matter, making decorations. Using her lightsabers she carved a table out of stone, and she even delved into weaving her own baskets. Everything she made was made by her own hand, and everything she did was for herself and by herself.
If she’d been recovering before, which was dubious, any further progress was halted, and she regressed into her wild and erratic self. Whenever she had any kind of a need, she slated it herself, and it taught her the old lesson of self-reliance all over again.
Kalima lost all track of time on Felucia, not even trying to differentiate hour from hour and day from day. For her it was largely a happy time, free from pressures, if not free from training.
The Dark Jedi, now indisputably a master, continued to practice plant surge and Force flight, perfecting her daring flights from plant to plant. Commanding them was a bit harder for her though, and she struggled to ensnare her prey in vines quickly enough, least of all to have the plants choke the life out of her quarry.
One day, Kalima was surprised to hear a ship landing, and she left her dwelling in search of it, quickly ascertaining its location and stalking the occupants as they climbed out, only to promptly stand and walk over to greet Dervin and a female Echani who was following him.
She was surprised to learn that six years had passed.
Once More Unto the Breach
Dervin was back, and he bore the news that, in the first place, Kalima was now forty, and in the second place that he wanted her assistance with his new apprentice Lesara, who was ‘liberated’ from her family at a young age. The Togruta had laughed and stated that little girls weren’t her field, to which Dervin had simply replied “Yes, I know.”
Somehow the human managed to convince his long-time associate to leave Felucia for a second time and help him with training. It helped that he promised her access to nature, access to men, and a stipend enough to buy herself anything she wanted.
As it happened, Kalima was very clear that she wanted to do something she hadn’t done in a very long time: return home to Shili.
Dervin resisted at first, as Shili was a Republic world and a source of many Jedi, but he ultimately yielded when he saw how adamant Kalima was over her capricious desire. He also knew better than to argue with her, as she might have literally gouged out his eyes and eaten them.
So they went to Shili, and set up a camp in the area where the scrub met the canopy forest. The weather was certainly interesting in that narrow swath, a near-constant mist and rain in the air as the conflicting weather patterns met. The hunting was excellent though, and Kalima obtained numerous hides that they used to construct a communal shelter from the pervasive rain.
Her own presence as an instructor was generally limited to providing instruction on plant surge and Jar’kai, which left her with plenty of time for herself. The Togruta enjoyed that independence very much, and she often went on long hunting trips, making herself a new black-leather outfit. There was just one more thing she was waiting for.
One of the very few things that Kalima remembered from her early childhood was that an akul-tooth headdress was exquisite, and the mark of only the best hunters. She left a note one day saying she was going away for a few weeks to a few months, and then the Togruta carried herself on foot all the way to the nearest tribe, arriving and brushing up on her Togruti, finding she could still remember a great deal of it.
Very soon Kalima was accepted into the tribe’s society, and she began the process of learning her culture, and about the akul she desired to hunt.
Gradually Kalima was able to learn much of what she’d forgotten about tribal life as a child, gathering flowers with a smile and assisting in the production of leather, where her new garments were constructed under professional eyes. And of course there was discussion of hunting, and of the akul.
A solitary predator, dangerous enough to kill whole hunting parties. Kalima identified with the danger of the beast, and a part of her felt that by slaying it she would add its power to her own, though her head knew that to be false. It would earn her respect though, and she lusted after the akul-tooth headdress…
After two weeks in the village, hunters directed her towards the area roamed by an akul, and she began to track and to stalk the beast, preparing for her confrontation with a giddy excitement.
At some point in the past, Kalima had become a thrill-seeker, savoring her acrobatics leaps over lethal heights, and savoring a dangerous fight. If there wasn’t a chance of death or serious injury, she felt it was shallow and trivial. This was what separated boys from men, an ironic comparison as she was neither.
When the akul came out, she sprang into action, hacking and slicing with her lightsabers. She stayed in constant motion, lashing out as she circled it, striking it as she evaded the massive jaws. It took a lifetime in combat terms, but she felled the beast and collected every single tooth, taking them all back to the tribe, and waiting as impressed artisans made her an exquisite headdress of wood and teeth, and added a necklace. They also provided her with a pair of gold bracelets she wore on her right arm.
Armed with her new attire and her trophies, Kalima trekked day and night back to the rainy hut, finally coming ‘home’ a month and a half after she’d left, where she promptly lay down on her bedroll and fell into a deep sleep, waking up at dawn two days later.
When Dervin and Lesara both asked to leave Shili after just one year, they were both surprised when Kalima agreed to their request, and they kicked off a galactic tour that would see the Echani girl become a teenager, and would see Kalima earn her place.
Insatiable
The trio headed along the Hydian Way to Eriadu, following the principle that it was best to stay in constant motion rather than to draw unwanted attention from the Jedi, and also because Dervin wanted his apprentice to have only the broadest experience.
It was in this time that the Togruta Dark Jedi’s appetites would get her in trouble.
Every time Kalima left behind grass, trees, and wild animals, a deep hunger came into her, and like a predator she stalked down what she wanted and took it. This type of conquest usually took the form of anonymous and passionate lovemaking with willing partners, but occasionally it took the form of torture or of murder, sometimes in conjunction with love.
The Togruta woman was a dangerous person to be near, and she left behind a trail of injuries, deaths, and broken hearts as she progressed throughout the Outer Rim. Given that fact, it wasn’t much of a surprise that after two years of roaming a Jedi Investigator caught up with Kalima, and by association Dervin and Lesara.
Her name was Dralara Gerdari, and she was a Mirialan with a habit of getting her nose into tough situations. She’d seen the fang marks on dead bodies in the morgue and seen the burns from Force lightning. The Jedi had already pieced together a loose profile of the killer, hypothesizing greatly about her nature.
Most of the Jedi had predicted a species like a Shistavenan or a Cathar, but Dralara had been the one to say Togruta, and she’d even picked out the likely candidate. As it happened, Alada had survived his injuries and given the Jedi a description of Kalima, along with her name, telling them everything. Her name had been put in a file, and now Dralara had secured a copy, convinced this woman was behind the murders.
The Mirialan caught up with her Togruta quarry on Onderon, just outside the walls of Iziz, while the latter was meditating in a tree. Upon hearing her name called, Kalima had dropped down and demanded an explanation.
Rather than lie when Dralara questioned her on the murders, Kalima admitted them honestly, openly, and without shame. That was when the Mirialan tried to arrest her, and a duel broke out.
It was Kalima’s first protracted duel with a Jedi, as the two other occasions were both extraordinarily brief, but this time she had the advantage of youth, as Dralara was in her 60s, and she had the advantage of an additional saber, as the Jedi used just one.
The Togruta woman was actually quite surprised when she stabbed the Mirialan woman through the torso and watched her sink to the ground. Had she really grown so skilled that a fight was nothing to her, or had the Jedi simply made a mistake? It was a question that was never resolved.
Kalima left the body lying at the gates and ‘flew’ over the wall, rejoining her allies.
Dralara left behind a legacy however, as the name ‘Kalima Dey’ was front and center in her notes, pointing to a suspect for her unresolved death. However they still lacked pictures, DNA, and eye witness testimony to the crimes. Ashla Ti and Adri’van were both able to provide statements though, describing their shared apprentice’s history, and so the file came together.
Name: Kalima Dey/Naraka (Kah-leem-uh Day/ Nahr-rah-kah)
Race: Togruta
Age: 46
Height: 5’ 10”
Weight: 157 lbs
Appearance:
The best place to begin with a description of Kalima is her face. It is safe to describe her visage as striking, as she possesses one of those faces that has a knack for staying embedded in a person’s memory, particularly a man’s memory. It is rather sharp, possessing angular features and a very distinct jawline. She has a patrician nose and full lips, but what commands the most attention are her eyes. These are a deep and rich brown, a chocolate color. They never quite seem to reflect her mood, but they have a hungry look to them that give her a distinctly insatiable look quite often.
Her headtails frame her face quite nicely, the white and dark-blue contrasting with her red skin. Up above are her montrals, the curving spires of ‘horn’ that serve as sensory organs for her. These are the chief racial attributes apparent apart from her deep-red skin, which is punctuated by white slash marks on her limbs and on her stomach. The markings on her face are quite distinctive as well, a white circle on her forehead and white slash marks from the corners of her eyes to the corners of her mouth.
Naraka is a true beauty of a woman, but there’s a downside; she’s not the female you can take home to mother, because she has ‘bad girl’ written all over her. It shows in the sly smile she often wears and the way she moves, slinking along in a bizarre mix of professional fashion model and dangerous wild animal.
It’s also apparent in the way she dresses, which is usually the first thing that anyone notices. Naraka is almost invariably found in revealing garments of black leather, little more than carefully-placed strips to deal with those ‘silly’ notions of modesty. It shows off her considerable assets very well. Her feet are perpetually bare, out of Togruta tradition, and the simple fact that she hates shoes and finds the feel of textures under her feet to be enjoyable.
This Togruta is extremely buxom and curvy, with a figure many in the galaxy would kill for, though it is hardly ideal in the circles of high fashion. She keeps herself in excellent shape through intensive exercise and through the aid of her naturally fast metabolism.
Naraka possesses three items of decoration that she always displays. The first is an akul-tooth headdress, with bronze teeth and intricately carved wooden beads, the second is a necklace of teeth, and the third is a pair of gold bracelets around her right wrist.
Personality:
Naraka is a woman governed by caprice, ruled by whims. She lacks any serious direction of her own, which makes her both remarkably easy to manipulate by those who rule and also persistently a minor nuisance.
The easiest distinction one can make about Naraka is that she is a seductress. Her reasons for seduction are rarely important, as for her it is more of a hobby than a calling. She has voracious appetites, which she slates with any being she can lure into her sphere. The fact that intimacy among Sith is dangerous only enhances her cravings and pleasure, as she finds danger almost as enticing as pain.
Naraka has a serious love affair with pain. It doesn’t matter whether she is giving or receiving the sensation almost everyone detests, the Togruta woman adores it either way. She loves the sensation both of dominating and being dominated, showing further differences she has by her mood.
Erratic would be an understatement when discussing Naraka, as her moods vary so wildly, even from one hour to the next. In the same day she might torture a prisoner, sleep with a colleague, cry into her pillow, or laugh merrily over a joke. The one consistency across all moods is that she craves intimacy, even of the false variety. Additionally, she craves flattery. Hearing kind words, even falsely kind words, about herself pleases her immensely, and she won’t hesitate to lavish ‘rewards’ onto those who please her.
Kalima is not a fan of technology. She considers droids to be soulless abominations, blasters to be playing god, and the holonet to be foolish false delights. She seeks her own pleasure not in technology, but in dangerous pursuits. Naraka routinely seeks out dangers and thrills, relying on the Force and her skills to pull herself back from the brink of the abyss. Her chief recreation however is nocturnal activity of a rather personal nature.
Naraka does nothing half way. If she is joyous, everyone knows it. If she is sadistic, her tortures are extreme. If she seeks pleasure, she will find it. If she is sad, her tears are bitter and her grief agonizing. While she is capable of extreme evil in her worse moods, if she feels generous or charitable, she is capable of great magnanimity.
In conversation, her words are usually brimming with seduction, delivered in the collected voice of a woman with absolute confidence in herself. She can often be sarcastic and snide, and deeply enjoys verbal sparring and battles of the tongue. And so much the better when it ends with her being flattered.
The Togruta woman is completely devoid of sentiment however. She doesn’t stay her hand over species, gender, or any other factor save one: A history similar to her own.
Kalima suffers from a sense of loss and abandonment. As a child she was left behind on Felucia when her mentor was summoned on a serious and dangerous matter with promises she would return. A decade passed with no avail, and that set in the red-skinned woman’s mind the idea that she could not rely on anyone but herself. When she sees others who have been abandoned, she empathizes with them and her charitable side comes out.
While Naraka is a chaotic force of destruction, her abilities can also be used for good, and to those who show loyalty to her and shower praise upon her, she can be both benevolent mother and doting lover.
While she might seem like an odd figure for a Sith Master, she isn’t a bad teacher by the standards of the Dark Side, having a very easily accessible manner of instruction and surprising patience, provided her students provide her with praise and flattery. Students who do not are met by abuse and cruelties.
Make no mistake, Naraka knows how to motivate. She can rule through fear or utilize pain as a tool to daunt her foes, and she rarely lets anyone get the best of her. Indeed, she rarely even allows herself to show weakness around other Sith, unless she chooses to feign it.
In combat, the Togruta woman is extraordinarily cunning and subtle, using traps, tricks, and ploys to her fullest ability. Despite this skill, she lacks the sense of foolish pride that some self-proclaimed duelists have, and she has no qualms about retreating from a fight that doesn’t go her way, which some would consider cowardice.
By that definition, Naraka is certainly a coward. By another definition, she still is. Kalima Dey does not pick fights she does not think she can win, and if involved in one, she will retreat. She considers this simple self-preservation, and has no qualms swallowing her pride to save her life.
In her command of the Force, Naraka specializes on telekinesis and telepathy, both of which she is rather talented at, with considerable ‘real-world’ experience at utilizing both. She is a master of two rare Force powers falling under each category, force flight (which she uses for enhanced mobility) and plant surge (which she learned in her youth alone and developed later). Her command of lightsaber combat is slightly less impressive, as outside of Shii Cho she is talented only in Niman and Jar’kai.
On the whole though, Naraka is a very dangerous Sith Master, apt instructor, and cunning fighter, but hampered by her own erratic tendencies, which hold her back from becoming truly great.
Birth place: Shili
Faction: Sith
Rank: Master
Previous Faction: Grey Jedi, Dark Jedi
Previous Rank: Apprentice, Knight
Lightsaber: Single blade single phase (x2)
Color: Blue (x2)
Practiced Lightsaber forms:
Shii-Cho 5
Makashi
Soresu
Ataru
Shien / Djem So
>>Sub-form Backhanded
Niman 5
>>Sub-form Jar-kai, or Dual Wield 5
Juyo
Double Bladed Combat
Force-Sensitive Abilities or practices:
Telekinetic: 8
Telepathic: 7
Body: 4
Sense: 7
Protection: 1
Healing: 1
Destruction: 5
Specialized Skills: Force Flight, Plant Surge
Languages: Togruti, Basic, Shyriwook (Understood)
Attributes:
Physical Strength: 4
Intelligence: 6
Speed: 6
Leadership: 5
Unarmed: 5
Melee Weapons: 4
Ranged Weapons: 0
Bio:
Shili
Kalima Dey was born on Shili, in a very remote tribe, far from all developed territory. Her village was little more than a few buildings of wood set in a deep valley. What was more, it was in an area surrounded on all sides by mountains, perfectly cut off from the rest of the planet. It was picturesque though, and the little girl had the opportunity to grow up surrounded by beautiful canopy forest and loving people.
Kalima’s parents were both local artisans who worked with leather, and she was never without food or love, Raana and Arji saw to that. They were both extraordinarily kind, and patient with Kalima. They taught her to speak and to eat, to clean herself, and all of the little feats a parent could be proud of.
The little Togruta girl’s days were composed of helping out with the leather, gathering flowers and berries, and practicing stalking thimiars like a grown-up. Her nights were composed of sitting by a fire and roasting meat before falling asleep in a bedroll in the corner.
It was a blissful experience, and one of the few things in her later life that would serve as a soothing memory.
As she grew older and stronger, Kalima learned about survival, about how to find water and how to hunt. She was taught everything from the best, and she was able to keep up with it, learning the ways of her people as she grew older.
The fact that she was Force-sensitive never came up at all. There were no blood tests, the Jedi Watchman was far away, and there weren’t any Force-users to be found until Kalima turned nine. A few days after she marked her birthday with a well-earned piece of meat and cup of fruit juice, something very, very unusual happened.
It was night, and Kalima was sitting on top of a boulder in a clearing, staring up at the night sky when one of the stars started to move. Excited at the prospect of a shooting star, the Togruta girl made her wish and stared at it with delight as it came closer and closer, until it passed by low overhead with a roar before coming to a crashing halt somewhere in the forest.
While the girl was scared, she was also curious, and she made up her mind to seek out the fallen star, already mentally wondering if it was aliens from another world, like she’d heard tell of from some in the village. When she arrived at the fallen star, she discovered it was a large metallic thing, smoking from the crash, with acrid smoke billowing from an open hatch. Tentatively she explored, climbing into it.
The smoke burned her throat, but Kalima dove in anyway, and started to check the rooms. In one she came face to face with a pair of aliens, both covered in blood and burns, the smell of their flesh pungent in her nostrils. She was terrified, but she reached out to check if they had pulses. One did, and she pulled him all the way out into the fresh air, then did the most heroic thing of her young life: She went back into the smoke-filled house of carnage in search of more injured people.
Kalima’s efforts yielded one other survivor and three more bodies. The survivor wasn’t an alien though, she was a Togruta as well, and she wore a metal cylinder on her belt that the child couldn’t recognize. With the pair out of immediate harm, Kalima ran back to the village and brought healers with her. Together they recovered the injured and carried them back to the village where their wounds were treated to the best of the tribe’s abilities.
When the Togruta child woke up the next morning, she hurried over to the healer’s hut and checked in on the alien and the mystery woman from the stars, and she found the woman was awake and tending to the alien. She looked up and greeted Kalima in Togruti, introducing herself as Ashla Ti, a traveler.
With rapt attention, Ashla told her story, and explained that the falling star was actually a ship that had started to crash on the way down to Shili, where she’d hoped to make a new life after leaving something called the Jedi Order. Ashla thanked Kalima that she’d been so very brave and rescued her and Janson from the smoke and fire.
What Ashla hadn’t yet mentioned was that she could sense the Force rippling off of Kalima, and she knew the girl needed training to learn to control her gift. Already she was devising a plan to take the girl to the Jedi Order and arrange to have them take her in.
Once Janson was awake and reasonably coherent, which was something Ashla had to reassure Kalima of since the man was clearly babbling gibberish, the Togruta ex-Jedi went in search of Kalima’s parents and sat down to discuss their child’s gift with them. She explained that Kalima was talented and powerful, and that she could become a great hero for the Republic, that she could make a difference in the lives of people everywhere.
Swayed by Ashla’s words, Raana and Arji agreed to give up their little girl to the Jedi.
For the week and a half that it took Ashla and Janson to assemble a transmitter from wreckage and await a response, Raana doted on Kalima, taking her daughter to do every fun thing she normally couldn’t, making the last days with her family blissful. Kalima didn’t even know she was leaving until the night before the rescue craft showed up. She didn’t go quietly either; the girl resisted strongly, but was eventually daunted by her parents’ wishes.
Ineligible
Ashla’s first stop was Corvala, the capital of the planet and one of only two cities. The Togruta Jedi took her charge in to the Watchman’s office, and took her before the wizened old woman. Kalima was quite nervous, but Ashla held her hand and told her it would be all right.
The Watchman required Kalima to pass a series of tests to see if she really was a Force-sensitive, and the girl passed. She looked to Ashla to see if this meant it was over, and she received a head-shake in the negative. Unsure what more she could do, Kalima was made to wait in the corner while she listened to an argument between Ashla and the Watchman.
It was simple, Ashla had said, Kalima was powerful enough that not training her was irresponsible. The Watchman had countered that she was too old to begin Jedi training and she would never fit in, would always be an outcast, that it was best to simply put her back in her own village.
Ashla was indignant, and decreed that her promise would stand. If the Order wouldn’t train Kalima Dey, then Ashla Ti would.
The Watchman told her nothing good could come of it, but Ashla took her new pupil by the hand and walked her out, pledging to her that she would wield the Force and became a great woman. Kalima had simply smiled and said she wanted that.
The Bond You Build
Ashla confided in Kalima right away that the girl was her first Padawan, or apprentice, and that she had never truly spent time training before. Nevertheless, she promised that Kalima would receive the best training she could provide, and Kalima accepted whatever she could get.
The girl, now ten, clung to Ashla more than ever, seeing her as a fusion of aunt and big sister. When the Grey Jedi said they were going to take up residence in a world strong in the Force, Kalima trusted her judgment, and they settled in to Felucia together as master and apprentice.
On the trip there, Ashla had begun explaining the Foundations of a brave new world. The Force was an energy field of all living things, and it gave a Jedi special power, power to do and to see, and they could reach out to sense every living thing. It sounded magical and amazing to Kalima, and she was eager to learn it.
The first year was hardly glamorous, as most of their time and effort was spent building a shelter to live in together as protection from dangerous animals and inclimate weather. Interspersed with the hard labor were lessons in morality and in the Jedi Code, there were even simple exercises to use her senses and to lift small objects with the Force. The crowning glory came when Ashla gave Kalima a real lightsaber to use for defense and for practice, showing her how to switch between settings.
Their relationship was growing as the second year came, and Kalima learned everything Ashla told her about herself. Her master was a Jedi Knight from Shili who had been trained in Mustafar, and who had come to Coruscant with her own master. She’d become a Consular, a diplomat who made peace, and a skilled fighter with a lightsaber as well. Kalima didn’t quite understand why Ashla had left the Jedi Order, but she received promises that she would find out one day, and that was good enough for the Togruta girl.
When she was 13, Kalima Dey’s training picked up considerably, and she was taught many fundamentals of Shii Cho and the Force, but she showed the most progress with telekinesis and telepathy. Sensing the thoughts Ashla let ripple off of her mind came naturally to her, and Kalima adored picking up small objects with the Force and trying to throw them. It was her hobby on those occasions when Ashla wandered off to meditate or to find food, deeming her student too young to hunt dangerous animals on Felucia.
The relationship between the two only continued to grow. They never spoke all that much together during the day, but they started to feel like two sides of the same coin, and Ashla fulfilled the role of family for Kalima. The whole aspiration of the teenage girl’s life was to become a great Jedi like Ashla, and to make her mentor proud. As such, she poured herself into her training, and she made rapid progress.
One activity that Kalima found especially delightful was climbing up large branches and fungi, and then letting herself drop to the ground, using the Force to cushion her fall. She also found that she could use the Force to alter her trajectory, to nudge herself as she fell. The Togruta girl would practice that incessantly.
Probably the most interesting thing she learned in her training was courtesy of Ashla. The Togruta Knight was skilled at something called plant surge, namely commanding plants through the Force to enhance their growth, to inspire them to do anything. Kalima watched with rapt attention as Ashla waved her hand and grew a vine from a seedling into a long strand that ensnared a beast, all in a few seconds.
The Grey Jedi promised to teach her pupil that skill and more, and they began the lessons focusing on blades of grass, and inspiring them to grow. The progress was slow at first, but she found eventually she was able to physically see it grow before her eyes. It made her extremely proud to see tangible results, and she wasn’t the only one. Ashla was proud too.
However, a turning point was reached at age 15, after six blissful years together. Ashla received a summons from the Jedi Order, demanding her presence and ordering her to come alone. Why was a mystery, but Ashla explained to Kalima that she had to go, but she would be back in just two weeks.
Kalima was sad, but she was confident she could live alone for just two weeks, so she stifled her emotions and waved goodbye to Ashla, not realizing that this was the end of their time together.
Two weeks of solitude passed, with Kalima practicing making plants grow and leaping from fungi like she enjoyed, and then when she expected Ashla to return, nothing happened. Another two weeks passed alone, and Kalima worried. Still another two weeks passed, and the Togruta girl was afraid she’d been abandoned. Another month passed, and then two, and then three. There was no sign of Ashla, and Kalima was totally alone, without a single other soul to bond with.
Daughter of Felucia
Kalima became increasingly odd in the absence of social activity. She rarely spoke, , and then only aloud to herself in Togruti, having never even learned Basic. Without guidance, she became increasingly erratic and unusual. She had no set schedule, and she soon forgot the morals she was taught, turning to new masters in her solitude.
Her new mentor was nature. Kalima watched animals fighting each other and saw the strong preying upon the weak, and the weak spiting the strong. Everywhere was violence for the sake of territory, for the sake of food, and for the sake of love. As her own body changed, becoming that of a woman, Kalima’s mind changed as well.
Ashla’s old lessons were gradually forgotten over three lonely years, and her love was replaced by a wild soul. Faced with a planet strong in the Force and untamed, Kalima became a reflection, falling to the inner darkness the planet was capable of bringing forth. Kalima became wild and untamed, giving in to any desire that crossed her mind, without discipline or moderation. When she desired to eat, she killed. When she desired to train, she trained. The only consistent growth she demonstrated was in her power.
Kalima was able to grow up plants to produce fruit, eating it as she needed, and in her leaps from plant to plant she was able to use the Force to slow her own falls, and gradually to resist them. When she meditated, she could lift herself up off of the ground, hovering in the air.
By the time her three years of solitude were up, Kalima Dey was all but unrecognizable, the concerned and loving child replaced by a vicious predator, a wild animal with no thought or concern for others, driven by selfishness and passions. Yet it was not quite apt to say she was in the Dark Side of the Force. Kalima was rarely purposefully evil, merely savage and untamed. What happened next would make her evil.
Descent
Kalima was meditating, hovering a foot above the ground, when she heard a familiar sound that brought her back to her childhood. It was another falling star, and she thought back to her first memories of the experience, of the stink of burnt alien flesh, the acrid smoke, and then she thought of Ashla, and wondered if this was her return.
The Togruta girl dashed off to the source of the sound, spotting a metallic ship flying down to land in a valley, and then she started to stalk the occupants as they emerged.
They were clad in black robes, and they held lightsabers. They were all human, save for one woman with headtails, a Twi’lek, though Kalima had never met one before. She was clearly in charge, giving orders to the others in a stern voice, speaking that alien language Kalima had never learned.
One of the Dark Jedi, for Dark Jedi they were, walked over to the shelter that Ashla and Kalima had built, and he kicked in the door and emerged with a few odds and ends. Overcome with rage, Kalima took a Force-enhanced leap and plummeted down ontop of him, gouging out an eye with her bare hands and biting open an artery with the cruel fangs in her mouth.
It was then that she discovered she enjoyed his pain, and the feel of his blood streaming down her chin. Even when he was lying on the ground she didn’t stop clawing at him. Of course a few seconds later she was pulled off of him, but he was already all but dead.
Kalima was bound and tossed against the ramp of the ship, and a fierce debate she couldn’t understand raged amongst the remaining four Dark Jedi.
The woman, a purple Twi’lek named Adri’van was the leader, the most powerful of them. She was adamant that they take in the ferocious Force-sensitive Togruta, that she would make a valuable addition to their little group. Indeed, Adri suggested that the young woman was the very reason they had been called to Felucia. One of the humans, a young man named Leonid, was equally adamant that they have revenge for their fallen member and kill the Togruta slowly. Another human, a woman named Ana, maintained that they kill her quickly. The last human, a man named Dervin, was carefully neutral and said nothing, knowing better than to cross Adri.
As it happened, Dervin was wise, as Adri beheaded both Leonid and Ana in one stoke of her lightsaber, not tolerating their dissent.
Adri, a powerful telepath, reassured Kalima that they were not going to harm her via soothing thoughts, and when the Togruta was unbound, she didn’t fight again. She accompanied Adri into the ship, where the Twi’lek woman found a protocol droid that could translate into Togruti. And then the explanations began, though Kalima had nothing but disdain for the soulless monstrosity that spoke to her.
The Dark Jedi were a group of Force-users just like Kalima, Adri explained, and that they could complete her training, as the Togruta’s master had clearly deserted her. That statement provoked Kalima, and Adri swiftly back-pedaled to say that Ashla surely hadn’t had any choice, but that clearly it was time for a new master to instruct her in the ways of the Force. After all, didn’t Kalima want to be powerful?
Kalima searched her mind for any reason why she shouldn’t agree to join the woman, and she couldn’t find one. Power was good, and she did want to begin her training again…
The Togruta woman agreed, and she joined the pair of Dark Jedi, making them a trio. They left Felucia that very day.
One month later, Ashla Ti returned. The Togruta Jedi had been involved in a second crash on Coruscant, one that had resulted in severe head trauma. The woman had been in a coma for a year, and only the best Jedi healing revived her. She’d spent another two years recovering her ability to walk and talk, and when her memory was restored she’d headed straight to Felucia, only to find her beloved apprentice was gone.
Dejected, Ashla returned to Shili to find Kalima’s parents and beg forgiveness for losing their daughter for good.
Meanwhile, Adri took her new pupil to the neutral world of Kashyyyk, to train free from prying eyes in the dangerous shadowlands, safely out of the reach of the Republic and the Jedi. And there Kalima had a renaissance of ability and an awakening of power.
Growing in the Shadows
Kalima turned 19, though her original birthdate was lost to time, and Adri began the new training in earnest, starting with language.
Adri used the Force to shove her way into Kalima’s mind and deposit knowledge of Basic, enabling the Togruta woman to understand her words. This fell far short of the ability to speak the language, and Kalima could only communicate through nods at first, and then telepathy. But she could understand the purple Twi’lek for the first time.
The Dark Jedi Master was a woman both cunning and subtle, and she knew how to wage psychological warfare. She’d touched Kalima’s mind, and she knew fully well what it took to take care of the Togruta’s allegiances. She was going to become the doting mother, the benevolent guardian.
They began by learning about the Dark Side, and Kalima was surprised to learn one could draw power from passion more easily than from peace. To her mind, passion was natural. After all, water flowed down the path gravity chose, and if passion was more intuitive, then passion was natural. And if it was the way of nature, Kalima could embrace it.
Kalima clung to Adri tightly, embracing her as master without hesitation or doubt, loyal to her not just because she had the power, but also out of gratitude for preserving her life on Felucia, and out of respect for her abilities as a teacher. In the pack, Adri was the head, and Kalima was a follower. She accepted this as a fact.
The Twi’lek was impressed by her pupil’s beginning talents of Force flight and her somewhat more advanced plant surge capabilities, and she carefully worked to hone those abilities. She also resurrected the teaching of Shii Cho, but expanded into Niman and into Jar’kai, providing Kalima with a better array of skills to fall back on in a fight.
Ashla had always taught that fights were to be avoided, but Adri sadly told the young woman that it was inevitable. She was strong, and her strength would attract challengers. Kalima had to be ready to face them down, to remain the victor. Adri told her that those weaker than her would be jealous, and that it was up to her to take what she needed by Force.
To Kalima, it made sense.
Combat and the Force weren’t the only things that Kalima learned. The Togruta woman also spent a great deal of time trying to have the words in her mind come out through her mouth, and she was able to slowly grasp the proper pronunciations of Basic words, and to assemble them in the correct manner. Her language skills improved, and Dervin proved to be an excellent language tutor.
What Kalima most enjoyed was their setting. The Shadowlands were a place of great life, and danger. She could feel every animal if she tried, and the feel of the damp soil under her bare feet was exquisite. The camp that Adri, Dervin, and Kalima shared was simple, but the Togruta woman was used to a simple life, having lived one all her days. Not once had she ever seen the holonet, or even a hologram. Living in the Shadowlands didn’t change that.
The Togruta quickly found that they had a division of labor. Adri directed everything, Dervin handled all the fine work, and Kalima did all of the hunting. She would go out with her lightsaber and hunt down animals, bringing them back and butchering them with a wicked knife. She generally ate her own meat raw, while the other two cooked theirs. Over time the wild young woman took to cooking her meat partway, allowing for a delicious and crusty exterior but a soft and bloody interior.
Periodically Dervin and Adri would leave for the Wookie villages, and Kalima would feel anxious out of fear of being left behind again, but Adri always came back, and she brought a new lightsaber on one occasion, already assembled just for Kalima. It was blue to match her existing saber, the one Ashla had given to her. Each crystal worked for her due to the special bond she shared with both her light and her dark masters.
Their simple existence continued until Kalima’s 25th year, when Adri announced her student was ready for the next phase of her training, and prepared to incorporate the girl into society, teaching her how to behave. It was going to be radically different, and not popular with Kalima.
Exit Light
The young Togruta Dark Jedi flew away from Kashyyyk with her Master and her associate, and the trio headed to Cato Neimoidia, which Adri determined had both city enough to teach Kalima and forest enough to prevent her from going insane.
By this point Kalima’s Basic was perfectly passable, but she still dressed in revealing leather garments and walked around in bare feet, not even trying to conceal the lightsabers resting on her waist. Adri couldn’t quite break her of that habit, but she didn’t feel it was important to. Her focus was actually just on socializing her pupil, and introducing her to the technology she disliked so much.
Though her comprehension was less than stellar, Kalima could read Basic, and the plethora of signs in the bridge cities did not go without being understood. The true intimidation was the fact so much was going on. There were too many people, too many noises, and too much to see. The Togruta woman felt a little dizzy, and Adri took her in a café to rest and recover.
While they drank tea like old friends, Adri assured her pupil that it was for her own good, because as a [Dark] Jedi, she was going to have to interact with others. Besides, she had to be strong, she had to be resilient, and she had to prove her worth as a student. Didn’t she want her Twi’lek master to be proud of her?
Over the course of two weeks, Kalima became familiar with the way life in a city worked, and she came to ignore the glances she received from passers-by for her strange attire. The culmination of their time on Cato Neimoidia was rapidly drawing to a close, as the task of adjustment was almost completed in Adri’s eyes. There was just one parting shot she wanted to get in.
Adri wanted her pupil to find her true potential as a Dark Jedi, and she felt that while her student was unquestionably wild, she wasn’t truly in touch with the darkness within. To cement her fall, she wanted to introduce the Togruta to her favorite topic.
The Twi’lek Master led Kalima to a dark room, and turned on a single light to reveal a human man tied to a chair. Her instructions to the Togruta were quite simple: Hurt the man.
Kalima blinked in surprise, unsure of what to do. While she’d enjoyed her first kill, she hadn’t ever had the opportunity or desire to kill or hurt another sentient being since then. She even said to Adri that she wasn’t sure she could. He hadn’t done anything to her after all.
Adri told her this was a test, and that she had to delve deep down to find her hatred and her rage, to admit that she found pleasure in pain, and that if she failed, the Twi’lek would leave her alone again.
Fear of loss drove Kalima into her first session of torture, and she started slowly, using her fists. Quickly she discovered she could sense his pain, and it shot a tingle of excitement up her spine. She used the destruction powers that Adri had taught her, shocking him with lightning, and she felt a strange kind of arousal.
Lastly, she used her fangs. To her surprise, she found herself kissing the doomed man, and biting into his lips, into his face, and into his neck. His blood was like a fine wine to her, and the sensation of his pain was silly.
From that moment on, Kalima had become evil. Moreover, she had become a sexual being. After the man’s body was disposed of, Adri let her out on her own as a reward, and Kalima found a stranger and seduced him, sharing his bed for a night before finding her way back to their ship. While she didn’t kill him, she gave in to an animal passion, clawing at his back with her nails as she lost her innocence in a second way.
Enter Night
As Adri took Kalima and Dervin off of the planet and into space, she couldn’t help but smile inwardly at how perfectly her training had come along. Kalima was devoted to her, and was now firmly rooted in the Dark Side. Admittedly the Togruta was much more of a sadist than her, but it was all still within tolerances. Her goal had merely been finding a worthy student, and she realized that Dervin would never be as worthy a student.
At Kalima’s request, the trio returned to Kashyyyk for more training, and there her abilities grew further.
The Togruta woman could grow out vines and send them to wrap around her quarry and immobilize them, she could hover in the air for hours as she meditated, and she could feel the power of the Force rippling through her. Similarly, she improved in spars, becoming Dervin’s equal. Shii Cho was mastered, and Niman and Jar’kai were nearly there as well.
After two years in her familiar settings, Adri took them back out into the galaxy at large, into Hutt space this time. They stopped off on Sleheyron, where Adri met an old friend and they had a little discussion. While Kalima did not know what they were saying, as it was in Twi’leki, she could tell that the man was asking her master a favor.
Adri went on to explain to Kalima that her dear friend was being followed by a pair of Jedi, and they were going to deal with them.
It was the Togruta woman’s first encounter with the Jedi, and she felt a slight reluctance. After all, Ashla had been a Jedi. But Adri was her new master now, and she had the power. Now was not the time to have ethical doubts, it was the time to act, to obey.
There were a pair of Jedi, and they met them in an alley at night. Unluckily for the pair of Dark Jedi, they weren’t a young Knight and a Padawan. Instead it was a Weapons Master and a Knight, and the pair of duels that broke out were rather severe.
While Kalima could literally feel the movements and locations of both the Master and Adri, her focus was almost entirely on the Knight. He was using a form she didn’t know, Djem So, and he was hammering away at her defenses. She managed to slash him in the arm, only to turn and see her Twi’lek Master lying on the ground with a stab wound, and the Weapons Master turning to face her.
Loyalty was fine, but her own preservation came first.
The Togruta woman fled, with the Weapons Master hot on her heels. No matter what she did, she couldn’t seem to shake him. She threw objects with the Force, she shoved passers-by in his way, but he still seemed to keep gaining. Finally she ran out of space and came to a deep urban canyon that revealed the lower city down below. Faced with a short and nasty ending to her life, Kalima jumped.
As she plummeted, the Togruta remembered her old habit of guiding her fall, and she grabbed herself telekinetically. Her momentum slowed, and she glided across the chasm, touching down on a walkway at the far end and making her escape back to the ship and Dervin.
In the absence of Adri, and dealing with her presumed death, the two agreed to become partners, and they beat a hasty retreat off of Sleheyron and headed to Umbara to lie low.
What neither of them knew was that Adri’van had survived the stab wound and was taken back to the Jedi Order who raised her, where she had been slowly healed and redeemed with time. Without her guidance, however, the duo of Dark Jedi were lost.
If anything, without direction Kalima became even more cruel and erratic. She was 27, and by all rights a very beautiful young woman, but she couldn’t be counted on for anything. Her days were spent listening to Dervin make plots and her nights were spent in lovemaking with strangers, often in increasingly deviated ways. Increasingly in the absence of her second mentor she found herself apathetic. There was no one to take orders from, as she certainly didn’t see Dervin as a superior, however he did make a few good points. It was up them to carry on Adri’s legacy now. He proposed that they take on an apprentice together, and that they both teach the youth they selected.
The Cycle is Complete
Together, the two Dark Jedi plotted to find a disgruntled ex-Jedi and teach them the ways of the Dark Side, and they decided the best place to start was Ukio, the Outer Rim agriworld home to a substantial population of Jedi dropouts in the Agricultural Corps.
By this point Kalima no longer felt serious sentimentality for the Jedi Order, as her first master’s love for it was undone by her second master’s apparent death from it. She would have been just as comfortable finding a Force-sensitive child who wasn’t a Jedi, but Dervin was adamant that the Order’s training would make their work easier.
They set up a small encampment in a green house and began to reach out with the Force, working to sense and catalog each failed Jedi and their minders. Dervin was skilled with Force Concealment, and he suppressed his presence enough to draw closer to their area of work, observing how many minders they had. They found the Corps members had a minimal escort, and Dervin was able to handpick a few likely candidates, judging they were unhappy by their expressions as they went about their work.
They planned their attack for mid-afternoon, when their opponents would be at their most bored, and their minders would be tired, and when the day came, the Dark Jedi acted rapidly.
The Togruta woman sprang into action first, using plant surge to bar the way through a series of groves for the Jedi, and cutting off their chosen pupil, a 14 year old sky-blue Twi’lek boy who had always seemed glum. As they acted though he was frightened and called for help.
Dervin knocked him out and started to haul him away, but the Jedi Knight guarding the children hacked his way through the brush and came face to face with Kalima, who promptly engaged him in a duel.
He was fighting to get past her, and she was fighting to immobilize him. He was caught off guard when she had a plant behind him extend a root and she forced him back a step. He tripped on it and she slashed a tendon in his leg, leaving him lying on the ground as she raced off to join Dervin.
Miraculously, they managed to make it off Ukio, though not without drawing Republic pursuers. They managed to shake them however as they jumped into hyperspace, promptly changing direction and heading for the isolated and unaligned world of Saleucami, and its exotic bulbous trees and barren landscape. They set up shop with their frightened captive in a large and derelict house in the outskirts of one of the sparsely-populated calderas home to vegetation and life. It was purchased outright with ill-gotten funds they had been hoarding for years.
For the first three days they couldn’t get much out of the frightened fifteen year old Twi’lek, apart from his name, Alada’ven. He was clearly distraught over his capture by Dark Jedi, and it took Kalima’s charms to set him at ease.
The lessons of Adri lived on, and her Togruta apprentice knew how to endear herself to the boy. She presented herself as a kind and benevolent mother, bringing him his food, then bringing him sweets. She would pat his headtails gently and whisper lullabies in Togruti when he was sleeping. Quickly he became attached to her, though he always shunned Dervin.
Kalima was able to coax him into talking, and she listened to his story attentively, always the doting mother.
Alada had been in the Order since birth, but he’d never really fit in. He’d wanted to become a strong and powerful Jedi, but when his 12th birthday came no one had been interested. He’d underperformed in the various tests, and when he’d turned 13 no one had intervened. He was sent to the Service Corps, where he’d languished for two years. The Jedi had contacted his family to see if he could be returned, but they had declined to take him home, and he’d been left on Ukio with a bunch of children he didn’t know.
As the weeks dragged into months, he grew very fond of ‘Aunt Kalima’ as she always presented herself. He began to think this was actually a blessing, and that he could have a loving relationship for once. For Alada, Kalima was the master he’d always wanted, doting and loving.
Hot For Teacher
By their second year together, Alada’s love for his mentor had transformed into something of a more physical nature, as was often the way with teenage boys. He found the little things about Kalima intoxicating. The fluid way she walked, the way she would sit in the morning sun in meditation, and the way she smiled seductively.
The only thing the Togruta woman loved more than sexual encounters was the sense of power she felt over Alada. All she had to do was snap her fingers and he yielded to her every wish. She touched him on the shoulder and he practically melted. Of course with so few prospects for intimacy on Saleucami, and Alada’s vicious jealous streak that emerged when he suspected ‘Aunt Kalima’ was heading into the town for sexual activity, it was practically inevitable that she sleep with him.
He was nervous and insecure while she was confident. For once she slept in a bed with him, letting him fall asleep on her breast when he was done. The next night she went back to sleeping on the floor as she was so wont to do, though their nightly activities became consistent events every few days.
He’d thought it was special, and even that she loved him, when it really couldn’t have been any more different. The truth was that the Togruta woman was using him for the sake of using him, and she increasingly began to use their intimacy as a reward and as a cudgel, threatening to withhold their nights of passion when he didn’t live up to her standards.
During the days however, Alada was improving dramatically. Kalima was instructing him in Jar’kai, as Dervin had procured parts for lightsabers, and the Twi’lek was actually learning. Like many sent to the Corps, he was simply a late-bloomer. However, he didn’t have as good a command of the Force as his Togruta master would have liked, and she was unable to teach him plant surge or Force flight.
By the end of their sixth year together Alada was a strapping 20 year old with near-mastery of Shii Cho and an aptitude for telekinesis, but thanks to Kalima’s training methods so far he wasn’t truly evil, though he had the prerequisites. He was jealous, possessive, at times aggressive, and he was firmly a slave to his passions, they just hadn’t led him to evil yet. The beauty was that Kalima had never led him to believe he was learning the Dark Side; Alada believed that he was student to a Grey Jedi.
Kalima herself was 33, and as cunning and subtle as ever. Like a spider in its web, she was carefully pulling the threads that would manipulate Alada into evil. She was certain that his jealousy was the right way to trap him, the right way to fill him with hatred. She began the preparations.
It started with a spacer the Togruta woman picked up in a local tavern, who she persuaded to come home with her. It wasn’t hard, as he was slightly drunk, and she was a gorgeous seductress. She was careful to ensure that Alada saw them enter the house together, and go up to a spare bedroom. She started to make love to him on the mattress, her lightsabers nearby and handy in the likely event it went south. And then she waited.
It was only about fifteen minutes before Alada stormed into the bedroom, and if he’d been ambivalent before, the sight of his beloved master naked on top of some drunk made him livid. He lashed out with his anger, striking down Kalima’s lover, but then a slight side-effect of her plan came back to harm her.
Alada grabbed her by the throat with the Force, and he started to choke her, wanting to slay her for her infidelity. She was lifted up off of her feet, gasping for air. As much as she didn’t want to lose her apprentice, she was less keen on losing her life.
The Togruta woman called her lightsaber to her and ignited it telekinetically, hurling the blue blade at the equally blue Twi’lek, who lost his arm, and his concentration. Kalima fell to the ground, gulping in air greedily and rubbing her throat, and then she wreaked her own vengeance.
She used Force lightning to shock her apprentice, to make him suffer. He writhed under her as she let out her anger, her fear at the sensation of being choked. When she stopped, he was a whimpering mess, cradling the burned stump where his arm had been.
Dervin came in and wasn’t pleased with how Kalima had handled the crisis. He’d always had his doubts about her plan, but now he was especially displeased, and he took Alada in to the nearest hospital to receive treatment, leaving him there and taking Kalima with him to their ship. As he explained, when they figured out it was a lightsaber that caused the loss, the Jedi would surely send someone to investigate, and when that happened they wanted to be very far away.
Too Little, Too Late
Dervin eventually tried to console Kalima, telling her that they would just find another apprentice to train together, but the Togruta woman was depressed, lamenting that they wouldn’t find as likely a candidate again, and that it would take a miracle to find what they needed. Dervin was willing to wait for that miracle, but Kalima wasn’t so impressed by his faith in the Force.
They struck up a bargain. They would spend one year together to find a new apprentice, and then if they failed they would go on their separate ways. Almost reluctantly Kalima agreed, and she allowed Dervin to take point as he usually did.
Over the course of that year, they broke into two orphanages to hunt for Force-sensitive children, lurked outside ten schools, and scrounged a half dozen planets in the Rim, all to no avail. Kalima began to think they were cursed, and by the end of the year she simply felt tired when she didn’t feel restless. The Togruta woman felt confined inside the metal spaceship, awkward in the Core Worlds. She didn’t like it, and even when Dervin came up with a ‘surefire’ scheme, she dismissed him and announced she was heading home to Felucia, to spend some time in seclusion.
Solitude
Kalima arrived onto Felucia again, and she instantly felt at home, though it had been over a decade since she’d been on the world of her youth. The nostalgia might have been overwhelming, had it not been for the sheer adulation she felt at being in a world rippling with life, rippling with the Force.
Even if she had known where her old dwelling was, it was unlikely she would have recognized it after so long. Kalima was dropped off by Dervin at very specific coordinates, and she came to call them home.
Her first order of business was crafting a shelter. In her case it was an earthen dwelling under large roots, which she excavated inch by inch over a month. In the end, it was quite a cozy little home for her, and she started to furnish it with her own creations.
The Togruta woman used her knife to carve various pieces of wood and plant matter, making decorations. Using her lightsabers she carved a table out of stone, and she even delved into weaving her own baskets. Everything she made was made by her own hand, and everything she did was for herself and by herself.
If she’d been recovering before, which was dubious, any further progress was halted, and she regressed into her wild and erratic self. Whenever she had any kind of a need, she slated it herself, and it taught her the old lesson of self-reliance all over again.
Kalima lost all track of time on Felucia, not even trying to differentiate hour from hour and day from day. For her it was largely a happy time, free from pressures, if not free from training.
The Dark Jedi, now indisputably a master, continued to practice plant surge and Force flight, perfecting her daring flights from plant to plant. Commanding them was a bit harder for her though, and she struggled to ensnare her prey in vines quickly enough, least of all to have the plants choke the life out of her quarry.
One day, Kalima was surprised to hear a ship landing, and she left her dwelling in search of it, quickly ascertaining its location and stalking the occupants as they climbed out, only to promptly stand and walk over to greet Dervin and a female Echani who was following him.
She was surprised to learn that six years had passed.
Once More Unto the Breach
Dervin was back, and he bore the news that, in the first place, Kalima was now forty, and in the second place that he wanted her assistance with his new apprentice Lesara, who was ‘liberated’ from her family at a young age. The Togruta had laughed and stated that little girls weren’t her field, to which Dervin had simply replied “Yes, I know.”
Somehow the human managed to convince his long-time associate to leave Felucia for a second time and help him with training. It helped that he promised her access to nature, access to men, and a stipend enough to buy herself anything she wanted.
As it happened, Kalima was very clear that she wanted to do something she hadn’t done in a very long time: return home to Shili.
Dervin resisted at first, as Shili was a Republic world and a source of many Jedi, but he ultimately yielded when he saw how adamant Kalima was over her capricious desire. He also knew better than to argue with her, as she might have literally gouged out his eyes and eaten them.
So they went to Shili, and set up a camp in the area where the scrub met the canopy forest. The weather was certainly interesting in that narrow swath, a near-constant mist and rain in the air as the conflicting weather patterns met. The hunting was excellent though, and Kalima obtained numerous hides that they used to construct a communal shelter from the pervasive rain.
Her own presence as an instructor was generally limited to providing instruction on plant surge and Jar’kai, which left her with plenty of time for herself. The Togruta enjoyed that independence very much, and she often went on long hunting trips, making herself a new black-leather outfit. There was just one more thing she was waiting for.
One of the very few things that Kalima remembered from her early childhood was that an akul-tooth headdress was exquisite, and the mark of only the best hunters. She left a note one day saying she was going away for a few weeks to a few months, and then the Togruta carried herself on foot all the way to the nearest tribe, arriving and brushing up on her Togruti, finding she could still remember a great deal of it.
Very soon Kalima was accepted into the tribe’s society, and she began the process of learning her culture, and about the akul she desired to hunt.
Gradually Kalima was able to learn much of what she’d forgotten about tribal life as a child, gathering flowers with a smile and assisting in the production of leather, where her new garments were constructed under professional eyes. And of course there was discussion of hunting, and of the akul.
A solitary predator, dangerous enough to kill whole hunting parties. Kalima identified with the danger of the beast, and a part of her felt that by slaying it she would add its power to her own, though her head knew that to be false. It would earn her respect though, and she lusted after the akul-tooth headdress…
After two weeks in the village, hunters directed her towards the area roamed by an akul, and she began to track and to stalk the beast, preparing for her confrontation with a giddy excitement.
At some point in the past, Kalima had become a thrill-seeker, savoring her acrobatics leaps over lethal heights, and savoring a dangerous fight. If there wasn’t a chance of death or serious injury, she felt it was shallow and trivial. This was what separated boys from men, an ironic comparison as she was neither.
When the akul came out, she sprang into action, hacking and slicing with her lightsabers. She stayed in constant motion, lashing out as she circled it, striking it as she evaded the massive jaws. It took a lifetime in combat terms, but she felled the beast and collected every single tooth, taking them all back to the tribe, and waiting as impressed artisans made her an exquisite headdress of wood and teeth, and added a necklace. They also provided her with a pair of gold bracelets she wore on her right arm.
Armed with her new attire and her trophies, Kalima trekked day and night back to the rainy hut, finally coming ‘home’ a month and a half after she’d left, where she promptly lay down on her bedroll and fell into a deep sleep, waking up at dawn two days later.
When Dervin and Lesara both asked to leave Shili after just one year, they were both surprised when Kalima agreed to their request, and they kicked off a galactic tour that would see the Echani girl become a teenager, and would see Kalima earn her place.
Insatiable
The trio headed along the Hydian Way to Eriadu, following the principle that it was best to stay in constant motion rather than to draw unwanted attention from the Jedi, and also because Dervin wanted his apprentice to have only the broadest experience.
It was in this time that the Togruta Dark Jedi’s appetites would get her in trouble.
Every time Kalima left behind grass, trees, and wild animals, a deep hunger came into her, and like a predator she stalked down what she wanted and took it. This type of conquest usually took the form of anonymous and passionate lovemaking with willing partners, but occasionally it took the form of torture or of murder, sometimes in conjunction with love.
The Togruta woman was a dangerous person to be near, and she left behind a trail of injuries, deaths, and broken hearts as she progressed throughout the Outer Rim. Given that fact, it wasn’t much of a surprise that after two years of roaming a Jedi Investigator caught up with Kalima, and by association Dervin and Lesara.
Her name was Dralara Gerdari, and she was a Mirialan with a habit of getting her nose into tough situations. She’d seen the fang marks on dead bodies in the morgue and seen the burns from Force lightning. The Jedi had already pieced together a loose profile of the killer, hypothesizing greatly about her nature.
Most of the Jedi had predicted a species like a Shistavenan or a Cathar, but Dralara had been the one to say Togruta, and she’d even picked out the likely candidate. As it happened, Alada had survived his injuries and given the Jedi a description of Kalima, along with her name, telling them everything. Her name had been put in a file, and now Dralara had secured a copy, convinced this woman was behind the murders.
The Mirialan caught up with her Togruta quarry on Onderon, just outside the walls of Iziz, while the latter was meditating in a tree. Upon hearing her name called, Kalima had dropped down and demanded an explanation.
Rather than lie when Dralara questioned her on the murders, Kalima admitted them honestly, openly, and without shame. That was when the Mirialan tried to arrest her, and a duel broke out.
It was Kalima’s first protracted duel with a Jedi, as the two other occasions were both extraordinarily brief, but this time she had the advantage of youth, as Dralara was in her 60s, and she had the advantage of an additional saber, as the Jedi used just one.
The Togruta woman was actually quite surprised when she stabbed the Mirialan woman through the torso and watched her sink to the ground. Had she really grown so skilled that a fight was nothing to her, or had the Jedi simply made a mistake? It was a question that was never resolved.
Kalima left the body lying at the gates and ‘flew’ over the wall, rejoining her allies.
Dralara left behind a legacy however, as the name ‘Kalima Dey’ was front and center in her notes, pointing to a suspect for her unresolved death. However they still lacked pictures, DNA, and eye witness testimony to the crimes. Ashla Ti and Adri’van were both able to provide statements though, describing their shared apprentice’s history, and so the file came together.